The noir Atlantic : Chester Himes and the birth of the francophone African crime novel / Pim Higginson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Higginson, Pim, author.

Series:

Contemporary French and francophone cultures.

Contemporary French and francophone cultures

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Noir fiction--History and criticism.

Noir fiction.

Detective and mystery stories, African (French)--History and criticism.

Detective and mystery stories, African (French).

Himes, Chester B., 1909-1984--Influence.

Himes, Chester B.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 216 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Noir Atlantic follows the influence of African American author Chester Himes on Francophone African crime fiction. In 1953, Chester Himes emigrated to Paris where he struggled to publish, just as he had in the United States, until the 'Harlem Domestic Series' transformed the author into a cult figure for a generation of Parisian readers who appreciated the blend of absurdist humor and violence. For African authors, these novels also modeled an escape from a high literary paradigm inherited from the colonial experience. Himes℗'s ambiguous role as a famous 'French' writer paradoxically also made him an effective means of escaping the centripetal pull of the Métropole. Starting with Abasse Ndione℗'s 1982 La Vie en spirale depictions of Senegal℗'s marijuana smoking subculture and ending with Mongo Beti℗'s 2001 Branles-bas en noir et blanc that displaced Himes℗' Harlem to Yaoundé, Cameroon, these works turned their backs on France and its ideological and anthropological criteria of literary success and embraced a new aesthetic. In the process, the Francophone African authors of noir became less motivated by Fanonian cultural nationalism and more with entertaining the reader while making a living. Noir Atlantic demonstrates why and how we should consider this move to a 'frivolous literary' as a profoundly significant moment in Francophone African literary history that lead the way to more recent developments such as Littérature Monde.

Contents:

Introduction : the frivolous literary

"Pas de littérature" : Abasse Ndione and the rise of crime

Minor mistranslations : Simon Njami and the making of the Parisianist Himes

Crime pays : Achille Ngoye and the Série noire

Ethnographic erotics : Bolya and the writing of the other

Terreur Rose : Kouty, mémoire de sang and the gendering of noir

Going out blazing : Mongo Beti's last two novels.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 02 Oct 2015).

ISBN:

1-78138-782-6

1-84631-704-5

OCLC:

741491884